I only read your halfus guide as thats one of the few bosses I made a guide on myself, and you sure missed alot of things. Not trying to be rude obviously, but you really want to make no mistakes in raiding guides.

agree on this
its totaly off; that is the strategy that was used in beta when it had a diff phase 2

I wrote this guide when Cataclysm was still in Beta, posted it on my guild's forums a week or so before Cataclysm released exclusively to try to have an upper hand for progression on my server, then when Boub released the contest I posted it up not thinking it would have been chosen.

Yes, most of the information is outdated and the strategies written are based off of datamined boss abilities, so a whole lot has changed.

Then why enter the contest at all, when you already KNEW it was outdated? Entering in its current form is going to cause confusion for the readers, anger for the ones who entered as well and didnt win and rage for the ones who actually know its wrong. Boub probably didnt even know the tactics and just looked at the way it was written more than what was actually written.

I wrote this guide when Cataclysm was still in Beta, posted it on my guild's forums a week or so before Cataclysm released exclusively to try to have an upper hand for progression on my server, then when Boub released the contest I posted it up not thinking it would have been chosen.

Yes, most of the information is outdated and the strategies written are based off of datamined boss abilities, so a whole lot has changed.

Which makes your guide almost worthless in some cases. That seems like a problem to me when now a lot of low end guilds are going to try and use this.

This isn't a guide of any sort, these are just notes from someone who's watched a few beta videos on youtube and tried to write down what they thought they saw. Fair enough it does say that in the initial post, and I'm certainly not hating in the author as he/she was honest from the beginning. The problem is MMO-Champ publishing this on the front page as a "Cataclysm Introduction Raiding Guide" which is embarrasingly misleading.

The encounters are completely different to what's posted here; important mechanics are missing left, right and centre and there's no way that any new raid guild would last more than a minute in on any of those bosses following what's written here. It doesn't even mention lightning conductor on Nefarian which is pretty much the mechanic the whole fight revolves around, along with the also unmentioned P1 and P3 adds and how to manage them, let alone the massive amount of wrong/missing things from the other encounters.

This should be taken down altogether so it doesn't waste the time/repair bills of any aspiring raiding guilds

This is ridiculous.
In an effort to NOT lead new raiders astray I'm doing some MASSIVE editting on your guide and *hopefully* fixing it all.
This is all based on my own raid experience, corrections are welcome.Strategies
Throne of the Four Winds - Updated.
Bastion of Twilight - Updated.
Blackwing Descent - In Progress.

Abilities- Outdated.

Originally Posted by AdamsGaming

I had written this guide about a week prior to Cataclysm to help my own guild out in progression, so instead of keeping it stuffed up in my own guild's forums I'll go ahead and enter it into this contest!

**Remember to use CTRL+F to search for the encounter you may be looking for!

Cataclysm Raid Strategies

Throne of Four Winds

----------------

Conclave of WindNormal Mode

The Basics:

There are three minibosses to be dealt with and they all must die at the same time, each miniboss has it's own elemental forte
and each of it's mechanics have something to do with that element. This is key knowledge for optimizing which classes and roles you
want at each boss.

The entirety of the encounter is on three different platforms, you can move between the platforms by simply running into wind
tunnels that are located on the sides of each of the platforms. It is vital that the entire raid know where these wind tunnels are, because
they will have to move to each of the minibosses during the entire encounter.

Mechanics:

The elementals are Anshal, Nezir, and Rohash. Anshal is Nature, Nezir is Frost, and Rohash is Wind. The raid's tanks will
need to be focusing on the Nature and Frost elementals because the Wind elemental deals damage to melee and needs to be tanked by
ranged, particularly a single healer on 10-Man and a single ranged DPS/healer team on 25-Man.

The consequences for just not tanking one of them are large and raid-wiping quality. If there is not a tank for Wind, the raid
recieves a permanent silence, if Frost is not tanked the raid recieves a -500% haste debuff, and if Nature is not tanked the raid recieves a
-100% healing debuff.

Each elemental has an energy bar that is maxed out at 90, once the energy reaches full each of the elementals does their own
special ability:

Wind: HURRICANE - Creates a huge vortex of wind, catching all nearby enemies and launching them into the air.
Anyone caught by the vortex will take 2500 Nature damage per second for 15 sec. At the end of this effect, affected targets will be
dropped out of the air, resulting in additional falling damage. Unlimited range. Instant.

- Before reaching max energy, he periodically summons three tornados that move around the platform, applies knockbacks and massive damage.

Nature: ZEPHYR - Heals all allies within 90 yards for 25000 health per second. In addition, these targets will also
gain 15% increased damage for 15 sec. This effect stacks. Instant.

- Also casts an efflorescense type ability called Soothing Breeze every now and then on the ground directly under him.

Frost: SLEET STORM - Deals 28500 to 31500 Frost damage per second to all targets within 90 yards. This damage is
divided among all targets. Lasts 15 sec. Unlimited range. Instant.

- He also places Ice Patches on the ground that deal damage to you and slowly debuffs you to stand still in it.

- Casts Wind Chill periodically, which is a stacking debuff placed on anyone on the platform that deals periodic damage and increases frost damage taken by 10% per stack.

- Also periodically casts Permafrost, which is a conical frost attack that cannot be avoided by anyone in front of him.

The Strategy:

Put all your melee and a healer or two on the Wind platform (Rohash). They will have to dodge hurricanes but it is preferable to having them on Life (Anshal) instead of the ranged.
Have your ranged and two tanks on Life to kill adds and dps the boss.
A tank and 2-3 heals on Frost.

At Life : 2 tanks, 3 heals, ranged dps. Have your offtank pickup adds and ranged dps them down asap. They do heavy damage and can be affected by Anshal's healing abilities.
Make sure all flower adds are dead by the time the bosses reach 80 energy as his special will heal them back to full and you will get overrun.
The Anshal tank and the Offtank both need to watch for Anshal's ground healing effect (looks like the druid Efflorescence) and move their respective targets out of it.

At Frost : Tank the boss, Heal the tank. 2-3 heals, 1 tank.

At Wind : Melee, 2 heals. DON'T get hit by tornado's. Watch the boss for a cast of Wind Blast. It is a 3 second cast and will knock all enemies hit by it off the platform. It is a frontal cone effect and the boss rotates ~90 degrees clockwise whilst channeling it.

Specials
At 90 energy on the boss's they will each cast a special ability that needs to be dealt with.
When the boss energy reaches 75-80 have all dps move to the Frost platform (Nezir) to soak the damage from Sleet Storm. Use a raidwall or barrier to help with this. A healer and offtank from Life should also be here for this. The other healer and Life tank stay there for the whole fight.
While dps are at frost, they should be doing max dps to the boss for the duration of the special ability cast then moving back to their previous location.
The Frost tank will then go to Life to Offtank and the previous Life OT will stay at frost and tank Nezir. The Life and the Frost healers also switch positions at this point. This ensures the debuff from the Nezir is allowed to fall off and not stack too high.
At Life the tank will immediately take large amounts of damage following the special so his healers need to be ready for this.
At Wind the remaining healer or two will just need to keep themselves up with instants and be ready for a Wind Blast when the Hurricane drops them.
Eventually, Wind and Life will get to low health, at this point Frost should be ~20-30% HP
Kill Wind and Life and immediately switch all dps to Nezir and kill him within a minute to complete the encounter.

There are three phases to the fight, in the first two phases three mechanics are the same and 2 mechanics change. First phase is
in process until 75% HP then phase two occurs, then at 30% HP Al'Akir transitions into phase three, continuing one mechanic from the
first phase.

Mechanics:

Ice Storm - A blizzard that leaves a trail of frost on the ground, both the blizzard and the trail of frost deals damage and slows you.

Static Shock - An interrupt, deals mediocre damage but interrupts for 5 seconds if you get caught casting.

Electrocute - A nature DoT that is casted on a ranged target, that target must run into melee range to dispell it, there is no other way.

Wind Burst - A knockback, deals about 30k damage.

Squall Line - Similar to sartharion's flame wall, you must find an opening in the squall and avoid it.

Acid Rain - DoT that starts at 500 damage per second to the raid then increases by 500 every 15 seconds.

Feedback - Damage done to Al'Akir is increased by 10% per stack if you kill a Stormling

Lightning Clouds - Summons clouds at the altitude of a random target and explodes 5 seconds later dealing about 30k damage to anyone of the same altitude.

The Strategy:

Phase 1 : Have the whole raid spread out as much as possible, assigning feral druids and rogues to the area behind the boss to maximise damage output. The spread is important since the lightning field he casts is basically a chain lightning effect that will hit each raid member in it for (20k * number of people hit). Casters want to maintain positioning closer to the edge to avoid applications of Static Shock. He will periodically summon Squall Line, which is a line of 6 tonadoes that circle the platform in either direction with a single gap in them. All players need to be aware of these and avoid them by running through the gap. Whenever he starts casting Wind Burst all players need to get to melee range so that they are not knocked off the platform by this ability. Ice storm is a slowmoving debuff on the ground that slows movement speed and deals large amount of damage to afflicted targets. Avoid this except if getting into range for Wind Burst or dodging a Squall Line.
Phase two begins at 80%, Al'Akir will continue casting Static Shock and Squall Line, but you won't have to deal
with Ice Storms or Wind Burst anymore. Instead he will periodically summon adds called Stormlings. When killed they apply a debuff to the boss, increasing his damage taken by 10%. Ideally you want to keep this debuff stacked on the boss permanently throughout the phase. This will require assigning some ranged to lower their health and execute them as the debuff timer reaches ~5 seconds remaining.

\____BOSS_____/
T2 T1|M

R|H

T1 : Boss Tank, T2 : Add tank
M : Melee
R : Ranged, H: Healers

A raid formation as above will help your casters avoid static shock and your melee/main tain to avoid the aoe damage from stormlings.
Ideally you want to get 3-5 stormlings on low HP, kill them all and pop Bloodlust/Heroism while the boss is debuffed and taking extra damage. Having good ranged dps to kill further stormlings in time will keep this debuff stacked on the boss and allow you to utilise it in Phase 3.

Phase 3 : At 30% HP Al'Akir will destroy the platform and all players will be free floating around him. Have everyone move straight down immediately and stop above the "web" of lightning at the bottom. Mark up your healers (assuming they can co-ordinate themselves to all be vertically at the same height) and have all members spread out for chain lightning whilst also still being range of heals. When clouds appear on the raid you have a few seconds to all move upwards to avoid the incoming Lightning Clouds. Have your dps align themselves vertically with the marks, and the marks with each other so that you're sitting about 10 yards above the latest web. Any player marked with Lightning Rod just has to drop down 5 yards below the raid to avoid aoe friendly fire. Wind Burst is back in this phase so all players need to watch for it and move closer to the boss on cast. If any member strays too far from the boss, they will be debuffed with Relentless Storm and thrown around whilst still taking damage.
Keep moving upwards on each new Lightning Cloud and if the boss was still debuff with at least 8 stacks of Feedback going into this phase, you should easily kill it before you run out of room.

This encounter is a two phase DPS race with some interesting mechanics. The main boss can be tanked and dragged pretty much
anywhere in the room, so if the tank needs to move the boss be ready for it. There will be a flying Proto-Drake in the back of the room
that is un-targetable and does not move throughout the entire encounter, it will flame breath the raid periodically for minimal raid damage.

There are multiple minibosses that are chained down around the outskirts of the room, three of them will be interactive (random each
week) and will help you fight Halfus by giving you some sort of buff and Halfus a debuff.

The Nether Scion - Pre-fight, applies a frenzy buff to Halfus Wyrmbreaker (+100% attack speed). When freed, reduces raid damage dealt, but will also cancel out Wyrmbreaker's frenzy attack.
The Time Warden - Gives his proto-drake the fireball ability. Freeing him slows down the speed of the protodrake's fireballs and puts a graphic on the ground for where they are targetted.
The Slate Dragon - Gives Wyrmbreaker his Malevolent Strikes ability, which causes a stacking healing debuff. Once freed, periodically stuns the whole raid for 15 seconds and does the same to Halfus. (Note : does NOT remove the Malevolent Strikes buff from Halfus. If you get this drake you will have to co-ordinate tank swaps at 8-9 stacks).
The Orphaned Emerald Whelps - Reduces raid and boss damage dealt by 50%. Count as a drake for the purpose of achievement and damage debuff.
The Storm Rider - Gives Wyrmbreaker a Shadow Nova ability which deals AoE damage and knocks people back. Freeing him will slow the cast to an interruptable speed.

Whichever minions you choose to free, Halfus will bind them to himself after a few seconds and they need to be tanked until killed. However, when you kill the enslaved minion, Halfus will take 50%more damage per drake.

Mechanics:

The mechanics for Halfus are fairly simple:

Berserk-Increases the caster's attack and movement speeds by 150% and all damage it deals by 500% for until canceled. Also grants immunity to Taunt effects.

Malevolent Strikes-Halfus' attacks wound the target, reducing the effectiveness of any healing on it by 6/8%. Stacks. (Slate Drake only)

The Strategy:

The Nether Scion - Pre-fight, applies a frenzy buff to Halfus Wyrmbreaker (+100% attack speed). When freed, reduces raid damage dealt, but will also cancel out Wyrmbreaker's frenzy attack.
The Time Warden - Gives his proto-drake the fireball ability. Freeing him slows down the speed of the protodrake's fireballs and puts a graphic on the ground for where they are targetted.
The Slate Dragon - Gives Wyrmbreaker his Malevolent Strikes ability, which causes a stacking healing debuff. Once freed, periodically stuns the whole raid for 15 seconds and does the same to Halfus. (Note : does NOT remove the Malevolent Strikes buff from Halfus. If you get this drake you will have to co-ordinate tank swaps at 8-9 stacks).
The Orphaned Emerald Whelps - Reduces raid and boss damage dealt by 50%. Count as a drake for the purpose of achievement and damage debuff.
The Storm Rider - Gives Wyrmbreaker a Shadow Nova ability which deals AoE damage and knocks people back. Freeing him will slow the cast to an interruptable speed.

On the pull you generally want to free 2 drakes at once (or a drake and the whelps) and offtank them until killed, picking up the third after the first dies. Which drakes you choose is up to you, but in general my advice is to free in this orderIf Slate is up
Nether Scion
Storm Rider
Time Warder
Whelps
Slate

Otherwise
Storm Rider
Time Warden
Whelps
Nether Scion

Choose which drakes to free from those that are available to your raid.
Tank all mobs on top of one another to allow for bonus cleave damage on all targets. Single target down your drakes however. When a drake dies, have that tank free and tank the remaining Drake and dps it down. Ideally you will have killed all three of your drakes before Halfus reaches 50% since if there is still a Drake active your offtank will need to be able to survive 5 seconds of being stunned, whilst all healers are stunned and the Drake is still beating on him.
Killing all three Drakes will debuff Halfus with a 150% extra damage taken debuff allowing your raid an easier time at making the enrage timer.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Valiona & TheralionNormal Mode

The Basics:

You start the encounter fighting Valiona while Theralion hovers above the raid shooting at you. At some point during the encounter,
Theralion switches places with Valiona and has a couple different abilities than her too, however both of their health bars are shared so
any damage you deal to one is dealt to the other. This fight is very heavy on mechanics and will take execution in order to complete, it
isn't so much of a pushover as Halfus is, so make sure you are completely situationally aware during this encounter. Just remember that
this encounter isn't necessarily a DPS race against an enrage timer or a healing check, it is a raid awareness test.

Mechanics:

Blackout - Lasts 15 seconds, when it expires or is dispelled it deals 350k damage and is split among anyone standing within 8yds

Engulfing Magic - Deals damage to nearby enemies (10yds?) equal to the amount of healing or damage you do.

Dazzling Destruction - Deals 80k damage every second, stand in it for 4 seconds you get sent to the Twilight Realm (it's bad)

Twilight Blast - Hits random people in raid and deals about 30k damage to players standing within 8yds of the person who got hit by it. 6 second cast.

Fabulous Flames - Explosion that deals mediocre damage, about 25k.

The Strategy:

On the pull all the ranged should be spread out, because Theralion will be casting Twilight Blasts on random people and too much raid
damage is bad. Almost instantly after pulling Valiona someone in the raid will get Blackout, this means the raid has 15 seconds to stack
on the person or else that raid member dies, a mechanic similar to the green ooze on Professor Putricide. Blackout can be dispelled, but
only if the raid is quick enough to stack because it doesn't need to be dispelled prematurely or else the person who has the debuff dies.
After the Blackout debuff drops, immediately spread back out.
After Blackout she will soon cast a wide-ranged (almost 180 degree) breath on a random target. It is pretty much the same ability as that in her Grim Batol encounter, all players just need to move out of the way as soon as she turns to face her breath target.
Blackout and the Breath repeat once more before the Dazzling Destruction and the phase transition.

Dazzling Destruction, is an ability cast on the phase transition by Theralion just before he lands. Is a randomly targetted purple swirly void zone on the ground that deals tremendous amounts of damage to anyone standing in it and if someone stands in it without dying for 4 seconds they get teleported to the Twilight Realm. The Twilight Realm is a very bad place to be, if you get teleported there, you must play frogger with blue crystal orbs that will kill you on touch to a portal that brings you back out of the realm. So don't get teleported there in the first place and stay out of the void zone.

On the phase transition, Valiona will swap places with Theralion. Valiona's most important ability while she is airbourne is the Twilight Meteorite. They
are similar to old school Ahn'Qiraj meteors and split damage to anyone standing under them. It is denoted on a player by a purple arrow above their head.
To deal with it, have your whole raid stacked with the melee on Theralion's butt and have your tank kite him around the outside of the room in a circle, but only move him around the kite path when a void zone is dropped on the raid. All void zones will generally be cast on the raid's position and are on a timer so easy to anticipate and move out of quickly.
Another important ability in this phase is Engulfing Magic, have all your raider's monitoring for it and if debuffed by it they must run in the opposite direction to the raids kite path until at least 20 yards from any other member. Don't complete a cast or wait around as this ability will deal enormous amounts of raid damage if any dps or healing continues whilst still in range of the raid. DoT and HoT ticks contribute to this damage also. If you have a holy priest in the raid, make sure they're monitoring for the debuff and quickly shield (body and soul movement speed buff) affected targets. Will be cast on two people at a time.
After around 3-4 sets of Engulfing Magic, Valiona will start deep breathing areas of the room, leaving a purple fire trail on the ground. She covers roughly 1/3 of the room with each breath but which section she targets is completely random, it will either be the northern third, the middle third or the southern third. Have someone watch her and call out which area she is going to breath on so the raid can move to avoid it. Touching the fire will phase you in the same way as Theralion's Dazzling Destruction.
It is important to note that unlike almost every other dragon encounter in game, neither of these have a cleaving attack or a breath attack so it isn't dangerous to move near the tank whilst avoiding abilities.

*I'm refering to the bosses as Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. So when I say, "melee should be on Fire" I don't mean the hot flaming stuff, I mean the Fire boss.

This is a three phase encounter where you have to deal with two separate councilmen in each of the first two phases. In the first phase,
you have to deal with the Water and Fire councilmen. Water has a melee-range AoE and puts debuffs onto the raid. Fire has a knockback
and leaves trails of fire to the person he knocks back. In phase two, Wind and Earth councilmen come out and instead of small mechanics
like Fire and Water, they pretty much blow up the entire room and if you don't have the correct buff in order to immune yourself from their
abilities, you die. Phase three is a DPS race, all four elements combine to create an Elementium Monstrosity and while doing massive
AoE damage to the raid, you have to kill the boss before your healers start running out of mana.

Mechanics:

Water:
Waterlogged - A 60 second duration debuff that can only be removed by running into the Fire councilmen's trail of fire.

Frozen - If you fail to remove Waterlogged, you get frozen in place dealing 40k damage every 2 seconds.

Glaciate - Deals massive frost damage to nearby enemies, if this AoE ability hits anyone that is Waterlogged it will instantly freeze them.

When starting the fight, each tank will pull Fire and Water and tank them separately. Generally, melee need to be on Fire to interrupt casts
and also so they don't get hit by Glaciate. Fire guy will periodically jump back and forth between a member in the raid and the tank that
has aggro on Fire, leaving a trail of fire between the two.

Anyone in the raid that doesn't have aggro on the bosses are susceptible to Waterlogged. If you happen to get Waterlogged, you have 8-45
seconds to clear it by running into a fire trail. Also, if you have Waterlogged and get hit by the Glaciate AoE you get instantly frozen. So,
it is in your best interest to clear the Waterlogged debuff as soon as possible once you get it. Just running straight over the firetrail should be enough.
Water will periodically cast Glaciate, an AOE ability hitting all targets within 20yards of him. Everyone needs to avoid this when casting.
Fire will put a damage absorbing shield on himself. When this happens call all ranged dps to swap to him and dps down the shield as he starts casting an AOE spell that damages everyone in the raid, increasing with each tick. When the shield is down, quickly interupt the cast.
If your tank doesn't have a reliable interrupt, assign an interrupter to the Water boss to interrupt Hydrolance.

Both bosses should be evenly DPS'd and made sure of that both hit 25% HP at the same time, this is highly important come phase three.
Once either of the Water or Fire bosses hit 25%, phase two occurs. In phase two, Wind and Earth are also separately tanked and DPS
should again be even all the way down to 30%. Because of Chain Lightning and Lightning Rod, it is in the melee's best interest to be on
the Earth boss during this phase.

In phase two, the bosses basically take turns casting a raidwide aoe attack that is negated by getting a debuff from either a Tornado or a Gravity Well. You must have the Gravity
Well's buff to negate a Thundershock and you must have a Tornado Vortex's debuff to negate a Quake. The order of special abilities will always begin with a Quake then transition into a Thundershock and then back to a Quake. Because we know this, when the phase
begins everyone in the raid should run into a Tornado Vortex. Once Quake is over, immediately run into a Gravity Well so you are safe from the next Thundershock and vice versa.

Again, both should be evely dpsed to 25% as hitting this mark on either will transition the boss into phase 3.

Phase 3 : Elementium Monstrosity.
Will drop a puddle of Liquid Ice on the ground whenever he isn't currently standing in one, can be dealt with by either kiting him around the edge of the room constantly or very carefully tanking him so he is on the edge of a puddle constantly. While the boss is standing in a puddle it will slowly increase in size. Essentially this ability is Defile from the Lich King but expands when the boss stands in it, rather than players. So either way the raid will eventually run out of room.
Also in this phase he is constantly casting chain lightning on multiple targets at once, so the raid needs to maintain a good spread to minimise damage from this. He also often throws out Lava Seeds which explode a couple of seconds later for around 40k fire damage, move off these FAST.
This phase is very healer intensive and requires good dps to get the boss down before you either run out of room or the damage becomes unhealable. Save Lust/Hero and cooldowns for this phase.

In this encounter, raid members recieve another UI feature at the bottom of their screen that tracks how corrupted their blood is. I will list the
effects of Corrupted Blood in the "Mechanics" section. Cho'gall has two phases. In the first phase adds will spawn periodically in certain parts
of the room and should be killed immediately. Phase two begins at 25% HP and the room will phase into a dark realm with a bunch of small
adds, these need to be killed immediately entering phase two. Cho'gall does increased damage while in phase two as well as increases
everyone's Corrupted Blood at a constant rate. Heroism/Time Warp are best used in phase two.

Spilled Blood of the Old God - After you kill an Adherent it puts this defile-looking graphic on the ground that deals 15k damage per second and
increases Corrupted Blood.

Festering Blood - Causes any, dead or alive, Corrupted Adherent to start casting Sprayed Corruption. If the Adherent is dead, it will summon
small "Living Blood of the Old God" oozes to from it's body.

In order to keep everyone's Corrupted Blood low, you need to stay away from any of Cho'gall's abilities and his add's abilities. The only adds
during this entire fight that do not cause an increase for your Corrupted Blood is the Oozes that spawn from the corpses of festering adherents.

Cho'Gall will switch between Flames orders and Shadow's Orders for the entire phase.
When under Flame orders, he will hit the tank for an extra 20k fire damage per swing and spawn patches of fire on the ground. Move out of them fast.
Shadow's orders will cause him to do AOE Shadow damage to the raid on each swing, the damage from this is increased by the amount of corruption on the target so keeping your stacks low is essential.
From the very beginning of the encounter Cho'gall will periodically cast Conversion which mind controls multiple players and makes them channel a damage buff to
Cho'gall. You must interrupt the player immediately by any interrupt or CC ability: Stun, Kick, Pummel, Counterspell, Shock.
Stacking the raid on Cho'gall's butt with the melee makes this ability easy to negate with an AOE effect like Psychic Scream (glyph it) or Shockwave, quickly interrupting the channel.

The adds in this fight are a main priority. The Adherents do a Shadow Crash similar to Vezax in Ulduar. It will increase corruption when hit so all players need to be aware and watch the ground for it's telltale swirly target mark. Have the raid spread out when an add is up to minimise damage from these.
Keep interrupts on the adds at all times to reduce the damage on the offtank and also his corruption stacks.
When an add is killed it leaves behind a black pool on the ground from which small slime adds will spawn when Cho'gall casts Fester Blood. For this reason, have your offtank pull the adds to one of the portals on either side of the room, and all following adds to the same side. This will ensure all adds spawn in the same place and are easier to AOE down. You preferabley want to tank cho'gall on the opposite side of the room from where you will be placing the adherant's, or at least halfway if your dps allows it.
Adds must die quickly before they gain a massive damage and corruption buff from the Fester Blood cast (around 30-40 seconds)

When Cho'gall casts Fester Blood, 5 slimes will spawn from each pool of adherant blood and head towards Cho'gall.
For the first two spawns, have all your ranged swap over and aoe them down quickly.
For the third and fourth spawns you may need to have melee help out to ensure they all die quickly since there is now 15-20 slimes up.
If you get more adds than this your dps is a bit slow and you risk being corrupted early in Phase 2.

Once Cho'gall hits 25% HP he will transition into phase two. Cho'gall will start doing periodic damage to the raid and increasing their corruption by 1 every 2 seconds. This is unavoidable and the fight is a race from here. He will also spawn tentacle adds at this point called Darkened Creations, these channel a Debilitating Beam on random targets, reducing Damage and Healing done by 75% while they're active, these need to be dpsed down as soon as they spawn before dps returns to Cho'gall.

Omnitron Defense System is made up of four different minibosses. These minibosses will activate one at a time in a random order, even the first
one that is activated is random. Soon after the pull, a second random miniboss will activate and will shield the current activated one with a
random shield that does bad things to the raid when it is hit. Only two minibosses will be activated at a time, so when the third miniboss
activates a current one that is activated will shut down. All the healthpools are shared so there is no need to split damage or make sure all of
them die at the same time.

Mechanics:

Arcanotron:
Power Generator - Summons a generator (looks like a blue void) under a random friendly target, increases damage by 50% when stood in.

Arcane Annihilator - Inflicts about 50k damage to a random target.

Electron:
Lightning Conductor - Whoever is inflicted with this debuff causes damage to nearby raid members every 2 seconds.

Magmatron:
Incineration Security Measure - AoE to the raid that deals 15k damage per second for 4 seconds.

Acquiring Target - A 4 second cast that will acquire a target to use his flamethrower on.

Toxitron:
Chemical Bomb - Fires a bomb that creates a chemical cloud on top of the target

Poison Protocol - Creates a Poison Bomb every 3 sec that will explode after coming in contact with its target

The Strategy:

One tank pulls the first miniboss and the raid should deal with the mechanics as normal. When the first boss reaches 50 energy the second will activate and needs to be offtanked. When this happens all dps needs to switch to the new target immediately as each boss places a shield on himself that can have devastating effects on your raid if it is dpsed. When the second boss reaches 50 energy, the first will reaches 0 and de-activate, and a new boss will become active. The raid will then switch to the newest boss and immediately stop dpsing the second. This pattern repeats through the whole fight.
For dealing with each boss use the following strategies.

Magmatron : lots of healing required when he uses his raidwide AoE attack.
when he casts aquiring target, the person targetted should move away from melee and then stop moving, all other raid members need to get out of the way from between magmatron and the targetted player. The target will then take massive damage and requires lots of healing to keep them alive.

Acanotron : Requires dedicated interrupts to stop all casts of Annhiliator, which can one-shot random members if he is in his Power Generator or the target is in the chemical bomb cloud.
When he drops a Power Generator field on the ground (swirly blue void zone looking thing) the tank needs to pull him out of it and all ranged/heals should stand in it for increased damage and mp5.

Toxitron : When his poison bomb adds spawn, the members targetted by them get a debuff called Fixate and they need to kite them around while other raid members quickly dps them down. Use ice traps/earthbinding to slow them for kiting.
Try and tank him so that he is inside his chemical cloud (green smoke looking effect).

Electron : Spread the raid out to avoid chaining lightning. If a player is targetted with Lightning Conductor, have them move away from other players and other players be away from the LC target.

The effects will need to be dealt with in pairs, depending on which bosses are active.

The enrage timer is very forgiving on this fight, dps isn't ever an issue.

Magmaw is a single phase encounter like Omnitron Defense System and is the optional first boss in the dungeon. He does not move during the
duration of the encounter and does several abilities dealing AoE damage to the raid.

Pillar of Flame - A huge fireball that hits a random ranged target for 20k and sunders the ground, don't stand in it.

The Strategy:

Because Magmaw does not move from where he is during the entire encounter and he has a frontal cone ability, the main tank should be
positioned next to the wall on the right in front of Magmaw while the melee DPS are positioned on the opposite side.
Have all your ranged and healers stack up in one group about 20 yards behind the main tank.
Initially he will Spit fire on a few random targets, before AOEing the whole raid with an unavoidable fire attack.
Soon after this you will be able to see an effect under your ranged group of fast expanding yellow circles, looking similar to a shaman's Earthquake ability.
The ranged/healer stack needs to immediately run to a similar position on the opposite side before the ground explodes and Parasitic Worms spawn from that location.
Have all your ranged dps these down as fast as possible, use hunter traps and totems to slow their movement speed, and if available, have a DK specced frost, go into blood presence and kite them using D&D and Howling Blast.
When they are down you may switch dps back to the boss, it is most important that they all die before switching though.

Occasionally he will "eat" the maintank and cover one half of the room in fire. Avoid this damage while healing the tank and have melee dps ready to jump on his head to use the chain ability. 2 in 10man, 3 in 25man.
When your "wormriders" get on him, they get a vehicle control bar with one ability, Hook. They are to quickly use this ability, targetting it on the spike in front of Magmaw. It is similar to targetting a caster AOE spell like Blizzard or Rain of Fire.

When all 2/3 chains are in place, Magmaw will fall onto the spike and become "Exposed Head of Magmaw" taking bonus damage. All Parasites must be killed before doing any damage to this. If you start with no parasites at this phase, it's a good time to pop Lust/Hero and cooldowns and blow the crap out of him.

Atramedes is a blind dragon which means he can only track raid members by sound, and all of his mechanics reflect this. Every member in the
raid during the encounter gets a new UI feature at the bottom of their screen that tracks how much sound you are making, when you reach 100%
sound you die.

Mechanics:

Sonic Breath - Inflicts 20k Fire damage to enemies in its path and causes them to be heard

Searing Flame - Inflicts 15k damage per second and increases fire damage taken by 25% every time it hits.

This fight uses a unique mechanic called Sound, which will show up on it's own UI bar as an empty circle, sound represented by a blue circle within expanding when it increases. It is basically a stacking debuff which will kill you instantly at 100 stacks (or 100% sound).

There are 8 gongs set up around the room and every time you use one it resets everyone's sound back to 0%, stuns Atramedes, and gets
destroyed. In a proper fight, a gong should only be used once in a ground phase then once again in an air phase. You use a gong in a
ground phase to interrupt Searing Flame, because if he manages to get Searing Flame casted it will wipe the raid. You use a gong in an air phase
because he has a Kologarn type ability that chases the person in the raid with the highest sound with a beam of fire, only it will gradually speed up it's movement so you need to ring a gong around halfway through the air phase (after around 10-15seconds). The beam will then switch to the gong ringer and he/she will need to kite until the next ground phase.

Ground Phase : Tank him centrally and have one person standing next to a gong, ready to interrupt his Searing Flame ability (around 45secs into ground phase). All melee and ranged need to be aware and dodge the Sonar Bombs that are constantly spawned in this phase. They move in straight lines and are easy to avoid if you're keeping lookout. He will also cast Sonic Breath, a seemingly standard breath attack, targetted at a random player. This player needs to move to avoid the breath, and all other players also need to stay out of the way. Getting hit by the breath will usually mean death for that player unless a gong is rang soon after as it increases sound by a huge amount. Move fast once he starts casting it to assure you don't get hit, because he casts it at your location and not at you.

Air phase : The first target kites the firebeam for 10-15 seconds and then a gong is used, when they can no longer move fast enough to kite. The gong ringer will then kite until the ground phase begins again. All other members need to move out of Sonar Bombs which are targetted on the ground and easy to avoid.

The fight then repeats in this fashion until either Atremedes is killed or your raid runs out of gongs (only 8 available).

To start the fight you have to talk with Finkle Einhorn that is in a cage behind the boss. He will activate a Bile-O-Tron that pats around the raid
giving everyone the Finkle's Mixture debuff. Because of this, healing is very different to the norm on this encounter. When a player is hit by casutic slime they will go to 1HP. For all intents and purposes in phase 1, they are at full health again once they reach 10k HP.
Players below 10k HP receive the debuff Low Health, which is useful for your healers to track to see who will be in danger of dying if hit by a second caustic slime (random single target, 300k damage) or massacre (raidwide, 300k damage).
Obviously any player with the Bile-O-Tron buff and >10k HP can survive either of these abilities.

After the third massacre, the Bile-O-Tron will be knocked offline meaning health once again becomes important. This phase is called Feud and during it Chimaeron doesn't melee swing the tanks, he just casts the Caustic Slime bolts. Since your raid is no longer protected by the Bile-O-Tron, they must stack up since the damage from caustic slime uses the meteor mechanic and is spread over all affected targets. When Feud starts have your entire raid move and stack on the tank. Massive AOE heals are required here, all hybrid dps should also be helping out since your whole raid will pretty much constantly have a -75% chance to hit due to Caustic Slime. After Feud is over, Bile-O-Tron will activate once again giving everyone the Finkle's Mixture
debuff and the raid must spread out immediately.

Two tanks are required for this encounter. The maintank will take all applications of Break, since Chim has a slow swing timer and the size of his hits is irrelevant because of the Bile-O-Tron. As long as he has >10k HP he can be melee swung for 1,000,000 and he will live. The important thing is to always pop him up above 10k after he takes a melee swing. The offtank will be used to soak Chimaeron's other ability, Double Strike. This ability would obviously kill the maintank after even one application of Break. The offtank should watch the boss for the Double Strike buff, meaning it will happen on the next melee swing and quickly taunt the boss once it goes up. After the Double Strike has happened, the maintank needs to quickly taunt the boss back and the offtank will need to be healed back to 100% before the next Double Strike. The offtank will need a minimum of 160k HP buffed to survive the damage of Double Strike.

These mechanics will repeat until Chimaeron reaches 20%.

After 20%, everyone in the room is affected by Mortality including the boss. Heroism/Time Warp must be saved for this phase because all heals
are negated. He will not however use massacre/caustic slime in this phase, just melee swings. If you have a couple of paladins in the raid, have them Lay on Hands the tanks just before phase transition to try and ensure that the tank health is high for a few more melee swings from the boss. Rogues evasion tanking once the tanks die also works well here.

Here is a video that explains the fight if you feel that you still do not understand:

Maloriak has two phases, in the first phase he has three separate miniphases that are prior to 20% HP: blue, red, and green. He starts out with
either Blue or Red, then goes into the miniphase for the one he didn't choose (e.g. starts blue then goes red or starts red then goes blue). After
the first two miniphases are over, he goes into the green miniphase that wipes all of the buffs that his adds get and applies a debuff to them that
makes them take increased damage. Maloriak has a 6 minute enrage timer so this fight needs to be very DPS intensive and the adds must be dealt
with strategically.

Maloriak has 20 adds held up in vials on the sides of the room, 18 small adds and 2 big ones. He will periodically cast a summoning spell that
can be interrupted, but is up for discretion. This spell will summon 3 small abberations until he doesn't have any left, then he will summon each
big abberation. Once Maloriak reaches 20% HP all of the remaining abberations are summoned instantly. All of the adds have a buff that
increases their HP and damage the deal by a percentage based on how many of their other little buddy adds are near them.So if a tank has 9
adds on them each of the adds individually hits for larger amounts rather than if a tank had fewer on them. Maloriak can also get the buff from the
adds, so they should be tanked away from Maloriak at all times.

Mechanics:

Blue MiniPhase:
Flash Freeze - Deals 70k Frost damage to all targets within 5 yards of the target and encasing them in solid ice for 30 sec. When the ice is
broken, the ice deals an additional 60k Frost damage to all targets 5 yards around that target, breaking all ice in that area as well.

Green MiniPhase:
Maloriak removes all buffs from his adds and increases the damage dealt to everything in the room including himself, the raid, and the adds.

Phase 2:
Magma Jets - Releases a stream of small fire fissures towards the enemy with highest threat. These fissures deal 40k Fire damage to all enemies
within 3 yards. In addition, the fissures leave behind a persistent burning effect which deals 20k Fire damage to all nearby enemies.

All Phases:
Arcane Storm - Deals 15k Arcane damage per second to all enemies. Lasts 6 sec. 3 second cast. Can be interrupted.

Remedy - Heals the caster for 25000 health and generates 2000 mana per second. The amount healed by this effect increases by 25000 per
second. Lasts 10 sec. Can be stolen or dispelled.

The Strategy:

If Maloriak is in red miniphase, all of the raid must stack on top of the tank to split the damage of Scorching Blast. In blue miniphase, the raid
must spread out and when someone gets Flash Frozen they need to immediately get topped off then broken out of the ice block (very trivial ice
block, it has 5k HP). In green miniphase, all of the adds must be immediately AoE'd down because they will all take 100% extra damage.
Maloriak should rotate through his miniphases twice before going into phase two, which means the raid has two green miniphases to kill all of the
small adds. The two big adds should just be offtanked in phase 2, I'll explain more later in the strat.

During the entire encounter, Maloriak will cast two abilities that need to be dealt with immediately. One is Arcane Storm, every time it is casted
it needs to be interrupted with no excuses. The other is Remedy, it can be dispelled or purged off of Maloriak, but if a Mage spellsteals it the
healers won't have to worry about healing the mage for the duration of it, saving mana.

There needs to be three tanks for this fight to go smoothly at the moment, even on 10 man. One tank for Maloriak, and two
off-tanks for the adds, because the current ilvl 346 heroic geared tank cannot withstand the damage of 12 aberrations (adds). Maloriak
will cast 4 summons before the first green phase, one offtank will tank 6 of the aberrations and the other will tank the remaining 6. After
the first green miniphase, the extra offtank can DPS Maloriak for the rest of the fight while the other offtank takes the remaining 6 adds before
the second green miniphase. The offtank that takes the last 6 adds will also tank the 2 big abberations that get summoned at 20% HP. Especially
make sure in this phase that the big adds get tanked away from the boss because they will still give the boss the add buff. It will be difficult
because Maloriak will be kited around the room in phase 2.

Phase 2 happens at 20% HP, in this phase Maloriak will cast Magma Jets. This means he should be faced away from the raid at all times, then
after he casts it he should be moved so the tank doesn't take extra damage. Make sure Maloriak is always facing away from the raid though,
because if he happens to cast Magma Jets and the flames trail through the ranged DPS and healers, the raid will wipe. Maloriak will also
summon frost orbs that need to be avoided. Time Warp/Heroism should be used this phase.

This fight is quite tricky, if you feel you still do not understand, for clarification watch TotalBiscuit's kill video and commentary here:

Srsly, how he could get a prize by making a guide that is a compilation of many beta outdated strats?

Like tank magmaw adds? Why, to spawn more endlessly? Srsly....

---------- Post added 2011-01-08 at 05:04 PM ----------

Originally Posted by AdamsGaming

I wrote this guide when Cataclysm was still in Beta, posted it on my guild's forums a week or so before Cataclysm released exclusively to try to have an upper hand for progression on my server, then when Boub released the contest I posted it up not thinking it would have been chosen.

Yes, most of the information is outdated and the strategies written are based off of datamined boss abilities, so a whole lot has changed.

Im pretty sure the GUIDE CONTEST RULES was that NEW GUIDES were supposed to be written. New guides that wasnt published anywhere else before (not being published was a requirement).
The guide creator clearly states that the guide is old and was published in his guild's forums, and still gets a prize? Sorry, this is way too weird.

For every Bossguide that is absolutely BEST to be found online - tankspot.com or youtube.com/ZAMOfficial - there simply are no better ressources to be found. Also alliena is a cute girl explaining boss tactics, check it out nerds!

For every Bossguide that is absolutely BEST to be found online - tankspot.com or youtube.com/ZAMOfficial - there simply are no better ressources to be found. Also alliena is a cute girl explaining boss tactics, check it out nerds!

Well, she has a cute voice, anyway. A damned cute voice. As for the rest... well, personal preference I suppose.

Yeah We ALl do m8 guess again somting went frong well lets hope it will be fixed soon

of course, not my personal favorite either, but the voice is pretty good listening to and for a german her english is awesome, but i guess that's to be expected as she's living in america for quite some time ^^

The idea of a guide contest was great, but I am really disappointed by the majority of the choices.

My guild is working on the Ascendant Council, so that's the first thing I went to read. A guide, done by someone actually trying to make a guide, would include things such as ideal group composition... Do I 2 tank it, 3 heal it? (for 10m) is 3 heals going to result in too little damage output for those not farming the content?

You don't mention Hydro Lance at all... was that not in beta? Or was doing about 45-50% of a random person's (non tank) health, from a cast that could easily be interrupted, not important? It's not mentioned that one often follows almost immediately after Glaciate.

And your Phase 3 "guide" isn't much of a guide. It's a burn phase... yet you make no mention of what actually happens... like the pools that grow bigger and bigger the longer he stands in them dealing damage to any raid member standing in them, requiring the tank to move the boss pretty much throughout the phase. The Electric Instability that the boss casts randomly and gets stronger and stronger the longer he is alive.

You mention that the bosses in Phase 1 and 2 should be burned evenly to 30% (actually its 25%) for phase 3, but don't actually tell the readers why... there is nothing in the guide explaining the P3 Monstrosity shares the health of the 4 Ascendants.

It's really a shame that MMO-Champ is apparently handing out awards based on the mount of words used in the guides and not the actual usefulness of the guide. It's like they didn't even read the guides... just copied and pasted into Microsoft Word, and the guides with the most amount of words used gets a prize.

Honestly, all the people who are saying they are bookmarking this or posting in their guild forums, lt me introduce you to: http://www.wowpedia.org/

Using this guide for progression content is only going to cost you repair bills and probably a loss of guild members.

Last edited by Gritalian; 2011-01-09 at 01:32 AM.
Reason: made note I was talking about 10m in referrence to amount of healers to be used.

What is there not nice to say about any of that? The guide is 100% completely and utterly useless and even the guy who wrote it admits that it is and he never expected it to be chosen and only entered it because of some weird reason that I can't quite understand.

I mean, obviously a lot of work went into it and it would have been great if 80% of those mechanics hadn't changed in beta, but even the guy who wrote it says it's terrible.

Magmaw only spawns 3 adds now, so yes you can have an OT tank the adds without many problems at all. Also dps never really gets off the boss anymore because the adds don't really do anything

...Uhhh, are you dumb or something? Magmaw's Lava Pillar spawns a good ~8-10 parasites. And if the parasite hits someone, it jumps on them giving them a debuff, which after 10 seconds does damage and spawns another parasite.